SYSTEM FAILURE

One of the most fascinating things about my granny, aka Yaya, was her capability of adapting to a world which evolved at sound speed in the past century. And she didn’t blink an eye in sign of wonderment. She used to assimilate the advances as they came, processing them as normal quicker than we would in her situation, I’m positive.

She was born in 1907, and only a couple of weeks she missed from being 99. Not bad for a lady, huh?

My yaya lived in the times of WWI and WWII, and survived the Civil War and all that came during and after he same. She experienced herself the introduction of vehicles substituting animal draught, films and TV, the evolution of music into different formats (she used to love my CDs). She witnessed giant iron winged vehicles taking off beyond her comprehension, the development of electrical appliances such as fridges, ovens, microwaves or juicers, videos, and cordless phones.She used to tell me how advanced and daring she was, not only for wearing skirt trousers but also for horse riding like men. Can you imagine?

The reason I’m telling all this has to do with the drama experienced today, when I woke up this morning and with my early morning coffee, found out my Internet home connection wasn’t working properly. My mobile was surfing thanks to the Wi-Fi with no problem, but the computer was unable to connect to any website.

You might be judging me and thinking I’m hooked to Internet, and I won’t argue on this regard, nor try to convince you otherwise, and won’t justify myself to feel better. I love Internet, and thanks to it, I’ve been able to book a flight to Tokyo, cook a wonderful risotto and unblock a toilet on Bank holiday.

Anyway, I’ve developed certain routines involving my computer and the net, and overnight, my computer is wrong and I’m unable to do my stuff. perhaps you don’t understand the picture, but I’m single, live on my own and right now I’m unemployed, which means I have plenty of time to do many things, and I spend great time in front of my laptop. On holidays I could forget about it, but when I’m forced to quit for causes beyond my hand, I simply hate it.

I like to consider a self-made girl in many aspects. From my teenage I’ve learned to do many things by myself, and have enjoyed being on my own when carrying out certain stuff. It also encourages you to manage your skills and resources and craftiness has an important role in your life. However, and sorry for the girls who would hang me by a rope, as a woman, I sometimes need a husband for rental. There are certain things I simply can’t do, mainly because I haven’t had the chance to try to learn and do under supervision: use an electric drill or handle electrical wires, are easy examples which come to mind.

Technology is wonderful as long as it works. Unfortunately it’s also unpredictable and something you were doing yesterday, which was working successfully, might not the day after. Why? I don’t know, the heat? A virus? the mother board? You reset everything, re-start the computer 10 times, but still doesn’t work, and a feel of anxious desperation invades you deep inside, with two thoughts occupying your mind: ”Sheeit, it was working fine yesterday!” and “What the hell am I gonna do?”. It’s the moment of DRAMA.

In my case the computer worked but the internet connection, whose signal was apparently excellent, wasn’t. On the other hand my phone was functioning normal with the Wi-Fi.

I called one of my best friends who is a super IT guy, but since he lives in Madrid, and despite the screen prints I sent him via phone, he couldn’t see what was wrong. The second attempt has been carried out by a second friend this afternoon. After one hour he’s switched off the laptop and lighted a cigarette. The third friend has been the lucky one and had to do something I wouldn’t done by myself, but finally the computer has reacted to his restoring of the system and everything’s back to normal. I was positive my friends would fix the problem, I trust them a lot, but the truth is that there’s been a moment I expected the worst.

My point is that I’ve felt like an ignorant asshole the whole day because I only know how to use a computer and work with the different programs I need, but my knowledge of maintenance, repairing and preventing, aside the antivirus, is almost none. You are not given a guide for incidences and when studying computers at school, nobody advise on these matters. We depend too much on devices we don’t even know how they work.

I remember the first time a virus was notified I almost had a heart attack, thinking that my computer, which had cost me effort and money, was not going to work anymore. Oh man! What a horrible feeling!

Machines are not perfect, and at the end of the day is the human performance essential to restore the mess. At this point I usually wonder, would it be possible a robot uprising, such as the started with Skynet? Or in Westworld?Perhaps, but thinking of these sudden errors, sooner or later machines would collapse by themselves.